Amnesty International accused Israel on Wednesday of carrying out a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank with the intention of annexing the Palestinian territory, reports AP.

The accusation came in a new, 149-page report alleging that the forced displacement of West Bank Palestinians resulted from a concerted state policy, and not just the actions of violent settlers. 

While much of the displacement is driven by settlers who build outposts on Palestinian land, the report asserts that the process could not occur without the support of the government.

UN data says that over 100 West Bank villages have been fully or partially emptied out between January 2023 and April 2026. 

At the same time, the United Nations has tracked more than 7,280 instances of individual Palestinian displacement because of the demolition of homes and structures by Israeli forces, a figure that includes people who were displaced more than once.

Israel has in the past denounced such accusations — including allegations of ethnic cleansing — as reflecting longtime unfair bias. It did not immediately respond to the report.

“These abuses are not the result of a few ‘bad apples.’ Settler violence is a core component of a state-sanctioned campaign of ethnic cleansing,” said Agnès Callamard, the head of Amnesty. 

“What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world.”

Israeli leaders have condemned particularly grave violence by Jewish settlers but tend to denounce them as exceptions. 

Key Cabinet ministers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government are pushing for a formal annexation of the territory, and officials have voiced support for Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.

Amnesty says it has identified dozens of bills in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to extend Israeli civil law and jurisdiction over settlement blocs, as well as over courts that try Palestinians. 

Recently, the parliament approved a measure making the death penalty the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis.

Last year, US President Donald Trump said he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. The US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas militant group that aimed to stop the war in Gaza also acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for statehood.

Amnesty says the large-scale displacement of Palestinian Bedouin communities in the territory is caused by settler violence, advancement of new settlements and the Israeli takeover of large swaths of unregistered land. 

Rights groups have raised the alarm about this form of displacement before 2023, but say it dramatically intensified after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that year that triggered the war.

Rights groups say Bedouin herding communities in remote areas of the West Bank are most vulnerable to displacement. 

Unlike Palestinians in cities and towns across the West Bank, the villagers are less able to withstand the pressure from often-armed settlers as they establish new outposts around Palestinian villages.

The anti-settlement monitoring group Peace Now says that 212 of at least 363 existing outposts in the West Bank were created since 2023. 

The outposts are built without permission from Israeli authorities, who sometimes dismantle them but other times turn a blind eye or even legalize them retroactively.

The international community overwhelmingly considers the settlements illegal. Israel, meanwhile, views the West Bank as disputed territory and says its final status is subject to negotiations.

Amnesty said its report looked into 27 hamlets and villages in the West Bank where Palestinians were displaced between 2023 and 2025. 

Researchers interviewed dozens of Palestinians and lawyers, spoke with witnesses of settler violence, watched over 420 videos and analyzed government statements and other reports.

The group also said the international community has failed to act to stop the displacement.

More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for their independent state, along with the Gaza Strip.

MSH

At least 34 people, including two babies were killed when a contraband fuel depot exploded into flames in southern Benin near the border with Nigeria on Saturday.

According to Beninese Interior Minister Alassane Seidou, “a serious fire occurred in the town of Seme Podji. Another 20 people were seriously wounded in the incident.”

"I can't really give you the cause of the fire, but there is a large gasoline warehouse here and cars, tricycles and motorcycles come from morning to evening,” he added.

Nigeria is a main oil and gas producer where fuel smuggling is very common along its borders, particularly when the government maintains a subsidy to keep fuel prices low.

The majority of the victims were burnt and they could not be not be identified.

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